The Development of Word Recognition Materials for Native Speakers of Tongan

The purpose of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Tongan bisyllabic word lists for use in measurement of word recognition testing. Commonly used bisyllabic words were digitally recorded by male and female native talkers of Tongan. The psychometric performance of the words was measured at ten intensity levels (- 5 to 40 dB HL) in 5 dB increments by 20 listeners with normal hearing acuity. The 200 words with the highest rate of listener identification were included in four relatively psychometrically equivalent word lists of 50 words each and eight half-lists of 25 words each. Using logistic regression, the mean psychometric slope across the created word lists at 50% intelligibility was found to be 6.3%/dB for materials created from the male talker recordings and 6.2%/dB for the female talker recordings. To increase auditory homogeneity of the word recognition lists, the intensity of words in each list was digitally adjusted so that the threshold of each list was equal to the midpoint between the mean thresholds of the male and female half-lists. Digital recordings of the psychometrically equivalent word recognition lists are available on compact disc.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Grantor dc:publisher

Brigham Young University - Provo

Author dc:creator

• Seaver, Lara Cahoon

• speech audiometry
• audiology
• Tongan
• word recognition
• Communication Sciences and Disorders

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1437

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-2436